The Sounds of Advent

I was listening for the sound of hamburgers sizzling on the grill when I heard the sound of wind stirring in the top of the nearby towering pecan tree.  I know wind does not make any noise, but suddenly small limbs were moving and the brown leaves that had been tenaciously hanging started their final journey.  As they became captive to the wind and bounced off branches, there was a noise that heralded the final flight.  I watched as they were driven above the garden, some drifting aimlessly and some moving as if driven by a powerful force.  Regardless of how they flew, all made it safely to their final resting place where they would wait to become part of the nurturing power of the earth.

 

What was left was a pecan tree now empty and bare.  Limbs were like stick silhouettes suspended in the graying sky.  The final act was completed as brown leaves lay silent beside the already fallen pecans on the ground.  It sometimes seems that in these winter months when so much lays dormant that the trees and the earth are resting.  They are resting and waiting.  The tree once so full of life now waits for the next Spring when mysteriously a power will come forth from the dirt which holds its roots.  Can  barren trees long for such a day, or are they content to wait until that nurturing power brings life again?

I suppose it is too much to ask a tree, but to ask the tree is to hold the same question up to the one who sits by the grill waiting for one sound only to hear another.  When the human soul seems stripped and nothing is left but despair, can it really hope for a day when once again life giving power will sound its coming?  Maybe these souls of ours need those moments when there is nothing to do but wait for the Spirit to come from whence He will to bring His mysterious renewing power to bear on our lives.  "Father God, as these trees rest and wait on You, so teach me to live.  Amen."